Carnival

by Kory M. Shrum

  Whenever Grandmamie had treated her like an adult, Melandra had never been able to resist it. Now, looking back, Melandra suspected that Grandmamie was well aware of this fact.

  Grandmamie had rummaged in her black purse, the one they’d gotten from the $1 bin at the Salvation Army. She’d pulled out a slick deck of cards wrapped in black cloth.

  “You know my cards will be your cards one day,” Grandmamie said, holding her cigarette between her lips. It bobbed as she spoke. “I’m going to leave them to you when I die.”

  Mel hadn’t been able to imagine a world in which her grandmother, as battle-worn as any general, could die. Yet Grandmamie was dead three years later.

  “Why me?” Mel had dared to ask. Grandmamie had despised compliment-seeking all her life, and in a way, Mel knew that this question could be mistaken for such.

  But Grandmamie only arched a clever brow. “Why not your aunties Simone or Adele? Or your cousins? Maybe you think I favor your mother over my other children?”

  It was true that Melandra had been the only child of Grandmamie’s eldest, Melva. But Melandra didn’t think that made her a favorite. In fact, Melandra would’ve bet a great deal of money—had she had any—that the only thing Grandmamie carried in her heart for Melva was heartache. And all five of her cousins were little. The closest to her in age—Janie—was only seven.

  “I want to give you these because you’re the only one like me.” Grandmamie snuffed out her cigarette in a glass ashtray resting on the top step and gave her a hard look. “I think you know what I mean by that.”

  Of course Melandra knew.

  “But let me tell you a secret,” Grandmamie said, leaning close and leveling Mel with a stare that would straighten any spine. “We may have a lot of vision, we may see a lot of what other folks don’t, but we’ve also got a big ol’ blind spot right here, you hear me?”

  Grandmamie had touched her heart.

  “Shuffle them.”

  Grandmamie handed over the cards then. Mel was impressed by how big they were in her hands, and how heavy, and did as she was told.

  “Now flip over the top three.”

  Again Mel obeyed.

  Grandmamie clucked her tongue. “The Devil. Justice. Death. You go in deep with a bad man when you’re young. Not even twenty, by the looks of it. And you stay in deep with him for most of your life. Only death gonna get you out.”

  “No, I won’t. I won’t fall for nobody.”

  Grandmamie spared her a sad smile.

  Mel stood up. “You said the tarot is a guide, not a sentence.”

  “Your life is your own.”

  “Then I won’t choose no devil.” Melandra stamped her foot down on the wooden step so hard the ashtray bounced.

  Grandmamie gathered up the cards and tucked them back into her purse. “Maybe you can break the cycle, but every Durand woman I can think of, as far back as I can know, has been stupid about love. Sometimes I think we’re cursed.”

  And like every other instance in Mel’s life, Grandmamie had been right. If only Mel had remembered the conversation the day Terry pulled up in his red Firebird.

  Rushdie spoke, yanking Mel through the decades, back to the warm and cramped attorney’s office. “Bottom line is, don’t let men like that scare you, Ms. Durand. If he ain’t got nothing on you, you have nothing to worry about. He’s got no case.”

  Mel saw his Firebird parked in Grandmamie’s driveway. She saw the black dress she wore the day of her grandmother’s funeral as she stepped out onto the porch to greet him.

  She heard the squeal of brakes, felt the car rock on impact.

  But he does have something on me, Mel thought bitterly. He really does.

  17

  Lady placed her heavy snout on King’s knee. He looked away from his laptop and regarded the sad, desperate eyes. “Need a walk? Er, promenade?”

  She sat back on her heels and shook her head. King knew this to be yes.

  He regarded the case file he’d been annotating. It was as good a place to pause as any. “All right. I could use a break too.”

  He wouldn’t mind a coffee and maybe even a snack. The afternoon slump was getting to him. Usually he powered through with a short nap, but since Piper had been working at the shop today, he hadn’t wanted to walk away from the office. But a short thirty minutes or so would help his productivity and carry him until five or six.

  “Come on then.”

  King closed his laptop, locked it in his industrial desk, and checked his coat pocket for his keys and wallet. Confirming he had all that he needed, he stepped out of The Crescent City Detective Agency and into the Quarter’s crowded streets. He bumped shoulders immediately with a tall man holding a plastic container of booze.

  The reveler looked ready to say something to King until he turned and took in the full size of the man standing before him. Then Lady began to growl.

  “You all right?” King asked with a cocked eyebrow.

  “Yeah, I’m all right.” The man turned away to rejoin his friends.

  To King, who was doing his best to remain sober these days, Carnival was a particularly trying time. It wasn’t just that alcohol in the Quarter spiked—it was that the flush of open drunkenness left him feeling like the only sober guy at the party. It was a feeling he’d never enjoyed.

  “I’m going to need that paczki now,” King muttered to himself. “A nice powdery one with raspberry filling. What do you think?”

  Lady had wandered forward to squat beside a trash can.

  King had his coffee twenty minutes later and was feeling more alert. He’d even forgotten the ache in his lower back, which had been aggravating him since the weather turned cold back in November.

  He was standing outside the French Market, watching girls in Carnival masks haggle with a merchant about the price of a shoulder bag, when Mel appeared. She stepped out of a bank with a stack of empty deposit bags in her hand, pulling the door closed behind her.

  “Hey,” King said, smiling. There was a certain pleasure in seeing a friendly face he hadn’t been expecting. He crossed the walkway to her. “Bank run?”

  “I’ve only got Piper until two. Thought I’d handle it before she left for the agency.”

  King had forgotten about that. It was past 1:30 now.

  “Can I walk you back?” he asked. He thought he smelled cigarettes on her hair, which was strange. King knew she didn’t smoke.

  “Sure.” But she didn’t start walking. Instead she bent to scratch Lady’s ears. Her bangles rolled forward on her wrists, creating a beautiful musical melody that King deeply enjoyed.

  Lady pressed her head into Mel’s hand.

  “Ma grande,” Mel murmured. “Tu es une bonne chienne, non?”

  Lady’s tail thumped against King’s leg.

  King harrumphed. “I would be jealous if I hadn’t gotten Lady for the both of us.”

  After Dmitri Petrov and his goons came to King’s apartment and abducted them, he’d decided it was definitely time to invest in a guard dog. But Lady was becoming more pet than working dog.

  King would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little lonely on the nights Lady slept in Melandra’s apartment. He often found himself glancing at the empty dog bed, knowing that Lady probably preferred Mel—who let her sleep in the bed.

  Mel snapped her fingers, and Lady fell into step beside her as they began their stroll back toward Royal Street.

  From the corner of his eye, King took Mel’s measure. He saw the deep purple beneath her eyes that she’d tried to hide with makeup and her dry, dehydrated lips, which she kept chewing nervously.

  He thought, A husband. Why didn’t you tell me? It hurt to think they were not as close as King had thought they were.

  “You been sleeping okay?” King asked. He pretended to be more interested in his coffee than her.

  “No. I’ll be glad when Carnival is over.”

  She took a step to the right to let a group of teens pass.

  King s
cratched the back of his head. “We’ll get a short reprieve before St. Patrick’s Day.”

  “I don’t mind the short festivals,” Mel said. “It’s when they carry on for weeks like this. The Carnival and Christmas sprints are what do in my old bones.”

  King laughed. “If you’re old, what am I?”

  She shot him a warning look, even though she was at least fourteen years his junior.

  King spotted a tall man leaning in a doorway, a cowboy hat perched on his head. It wasn’t that man, but it was close enough to remind King what was really bothering him, buzzing like a fly in the back of his mind.

  “I’ve been seeing a guy hanging around the shop,” King said. He’d turned his chin just enough to watch her expression without giving himself away.

  Her face tightened. “Oh yeah?”

  “You know him? Because he seems to know you.”

  Mel clasped her opposite elbow. “I know him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Not someone worth talking about.”

  Jackson Square broke open in front of them. The line from Café du Monde cut across their path, snaking around the artists selling paintings and trinkets perfectly sized to fit into one’s carry-on bag. A saxophone whined out of sight.

  “Is it the same guy that came into the shop? The one who was giving you trouble?” he asked.

  He enjoyed the click of Lady’s nails against the stones, even over all the other noises threatening to drown it out.

  “I’ll handle him,” Mel said. “You’re busy enough.”

  “I’ve always got time for my friends, Mel.”

  Again her face tightened, and King struggled to understand what he was seeing. Anger? Remorse?

  Even as they crossed onto Royal Street, he was none the wiser. The truth of the situation remained just beyond his reach. He grasped for it once, twice, but found only darkness.

  His agency came into view.

  “Is it serious?”

  Mel whirled on him, and now he had no doubt that it was anger on her face. “I told you, I’ll handle it.”

  Lady’s ears flicked back against her head.

  “Okay.” King stopped in front of his door. “Message received. I’ll stay out of it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I’ll see you tonight, right?” King asked, sensing that their time together had ended.

  Mel frowned. “For what?”

  “RuPaul’s show is on.”

  Her eyes pinched closed. “Actually, I’m going to bed early, if it’s all the same to you. See if I can’t get a few hours before the drunks really get going.”

  It wasn’t all the same to him, but he wasn’t going to say so. “Sure. I’ll record it.”

  When Mel turned away, presumably to return to her shop around the corner, King called after her, “Take Lady.”

  When Mel looked ready to refuse, King added, “She misses you.”

  This earned him a small half-smile. To the dog she said, “Suivez.”

  Lady didn’t have to be told twice. She took off after Mel in a happy trot.

  King stood outside his door with his cooling coffee in his hand and watched them go. He didn’t like the sinking feeling in his chest. He didn’t like it at all.

  18

  Piper glanced at the wall clock and saw she had fifteen minutes left before the shop closed. There was only one shopper left, two if she counted the man behind the purple curtain getting a palm reading from Mel. With such a thin crowd, Piper thought it was safe to start her closing routine.

  She couldn’t break down the drawer or count out the money yet in case the girl in the Care Bear t-shirt wanted to make a purchase, but that wouldn’t take her long. There was the sweeping and glass cleaning, the restocking of shelves, and forward-facing the merchandise. She completed each task quickly and efficiently, but her mind wandered.

  Piper had texted Dani as she’d promised Henry she would do—only to receive radio silence. Nada. Even after all that talk about “I’m sorry I ghosted you”—it seemed like she was doing it again.

  But why? She thought the dinner had gone okay despite the initial awkwardness.

  Piper put the glass cleaner under the counter and picked up her phone for the hundredth time that day. Zero messages.

  She frowned. “I mean, I can’t make her hang out with me,” she muttered. “She’s the one who said she’d missed me.”

  She put her phone down and sighed.

  Speaking to no one, she added, “I’ve made myself perfectly available. If she really wanted to talk, she would’ve said something. Or maybe the dinner was just about getting some guilt off her chest for lying to me in the first place. God, why are people so difficult. Use your words, people.”

  A polite cough interrupted Piper’s rolling monologue.

  She looked up and saw the girl in the Care Bear t-shirt holding a twelve-inch Pillar of Love candle.

  “Girl, same.” The girl gave Piper a sympathetic smile and handed the candle over for purchase.

  * * *

  With the day’s money locked in the safe to be deposited tomorrow, Piper turned off the lights and locked the doors. Melandra had excused herself after her last reading, walking up the stairs to her apartment with Lady on her heels.

  Another woman who won’t talk to me, Piper had thought, watching her go. Her pensive silences and distant looks hurt to watch only because Piper knew no amount of prying would get Mel to open up and let her in on the situation.

  Piper picked up her phone and texted a number she knew by heart.

  Pick me up.

  A pressure formed between her ears seconds later and then popped.

  Lou stepped from the shadows beside the rack of hoodies and into a beam of moonlight. It cut across her face dramatically, highlighting her lips.

  “That was quick.” Piper slid her phone into her pocket.

  “It seemed urgent.”

  “No danger,” Piper clarified, grabbing her backpack off the floor. She stopped short of admitting she felt lonely. “For me, anyway.”

  A sharp tug on her heart strings made her look down. Piper prided herself on the fact that she was the go-to for all her friends. When they ran into trouble, they called her. And Mel was dealing with something and wouldn’t even talk to her about it. It hurt. It hurt in the same way it had hurt to know that King and Lou had been working with Dani behind her back.

  Is it because I’m younger? she wondered. Is this some sort of age prejudice here? Because Piper could do stuff. Hadn’t she proven that already in all the close calls they’d faced together?

  “What do you mean?” Lou asked.

  “Mel’s dealing with something and won’t speak up about it. You think I’m easy to talk to, right?”

  Lou only blinked at her. “Yes.”

  Piper sighed. “I mean, you don’t talk much, but that’s not the point. Why wouldn’t she tell me what’s going on?”

  “She hasn’t told King anything either. If she had, he’d have told me to watch her.”

  Piper pursed her lips. “Good point.”

  She’d seen King come through the shop just before eight that evening. He’d stopped and said hello to Piper, asking how she was doing. Then he’d glanced at the purple curtain and asked, “She back there?”

  When Piper had said she was, that had been the end of it. King hadn’t looked worried or afraid. He hadn’t asked any questions.

  “Where did you want to go?” Lou rested the cuff of her leather jacket on the counter. Piper appreciated that she didn’t put her fingers on the glass she’d just cleaned.

  “What are you doing tonight?” Piper asked.

  “Hunting Fish.”

  Piper snorted. “Gonna need a pole for that?”

  Lou didn’t even smile.

  “Okay, bad joke. But when the world finds out what a monster he is, he’s going to wish he had a better last name.” Piper adjusted the pack on her back. “So you’re busy? No chance we can hang out?”

&nb
sp; She could go down to Wild Cat if she wanted to. She’d drink with Henry and their friends and dance all that pent-up energy off until collapsing into bed before dawn.

  But she wasn’t in the mood to drink, and the bars were less fun during Carnival anyway. That many bodies made talking and dancing nearly impossible. And there was always that one person who hadn’t put on enough deodorant, ruining it for everyone else.

  Lou pushed her sunglasses up on her head. “You can come with me.”

  Piper’s heart stuttered in her chest. “Come with you? To stalk a serial killer?”

  Lou’s lips quirked. “I won’t be getting that close.”

  Piper felt the stupid grin spread across her face. “Hell yeah I want to go with you. You’ve never taken me into the field before. I wanna see what you do.”

  “You’ll have to be quiet, and you can’t yell if I move us suddenly.”

  “Control my vocal chords. Got it.” Piper snorted. “That’s not the first time a woman has asked me to do so.”

  Lou arched an eyebrow.

  A blush spread across Piper’s cheeks, and she averted her gaze first. “Never mind. Let’s do this. How long will we follow him?”

  “Maybe hours. Maybe thirty minutes.” Lou slid her glasses back down over her eyes. “Do you need anything before we go?”

  Piper tapped the pack on her shoulders. “I should dump this off at my apartment. Then I’ll be ready to go. Listen.” She leveled Lou with a stern look. “I’ve seen the cop movies. I know stakeouts are serious business. I won’t be loud or stupid.”

  “I trust you.” Lou’s lips twitched with a smile as she reached out and wrapped a hand around Piper’s wrist.

  * * *

  Lou knew there was a risk in bringing Piper along. It was true she’d only planned to watch Fish from a distance tonight. She also wanted to check on Jennifer McGrath and make sure she was still alive and kicking. And Lou would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious to appraise the state of Fish’s hunger. The carved arm and ragged nails she’d seen earlier suggested that feeding time was near. But how long could he hold out? Apart from cutting himself, what other methods did he use to beat back the ravenous beast inside him?